During the last 5-8 years of disruption in our markets, the main driver was to be able to pay the bills and survive as a business.
That meant doing whatever clients asked for and making the best of it. Being responsive.
But we’re entering different times now.
We’re in a time of flux when the world is being remade, and our clients need our talents more than ever.
Not to predict what comes next — but to create it.
To lead.
And that means we need to climb up the Agency Value Ladder.

The lower rungs of the ladder are the reactive ones.
Clients seek specific capabilities: “Build a new site in Wordpress”, “Conduct research with our customers” — or simply capacity: “We need a copywriter and a designer to help us with our summer campaign”.
Up on the creativity rung, clients come to you looking for your ideas to solve a specific problem: “How do we increase conversions?”, “How do we get more men to buy conditioner?”, and so on.
You use your creative skills to explore the problem and develop ideas. Here, they need you to think rather than just do.
That’s the highest that most agencies climb, though.
But up on the top rung of the value ladder is where the real potential to lead your clients and your market is.
The chance to add the greatest value.
When you reach the Clarity rung, the client wants you when they don’t even really understand their problems yet. They see a fog of potential opportunities and risks.
They’re confused and conflicted. They don’t know where to start.
They trust and value your expertise enough to be vulnerable and discuss things they don’t yet feel in control of.
They truly see you as an equal they collaborate with rather than a service provider they procure and instruct.
Work on this rung doesn’t come through a competitive process. It comes from a call or an email from a senior person to one of your senior people asking for a conversation.
They don’t need “an agency”, they need YOU.
The force of gravity
But, it’s hard to climb up to this upper level, and stay there.
There’s a natural force of gravity that pulls you down to lower levels.
Client organisations prefer to procure commodified services, because it’s easier and (they believe) better value. They want to be able to specify what you must propose, so they can easily compare between multiple agencies and choose on price and confidence in delivery.
And your agency finds it easier to work at the lower levels too. It’s far easier, and our natural state, to jump into the solutions mindset and starting listing off answers.
It can also seem like the quickest way to be able to bill something.
Those forces of gravity have only got stronger during the disruption of the last few years.
Climbing up
But the real value for the client, and the value for your agency in earnings and satisfaction, increases as you climb the ladder.
And that value is even more important now, to lead on redesigning your little part of the world.
Clients may want to procure capacity, capability, and perhaps even creativity.
But what they need in order to thrive for the long term is clarity.
Where is their place in the new world? What part can they play in redesigning the future? How does their market need them to lead?
Next week I’ll write about how you can begin to climb up to this top rung of the value ladder, to be the trusted advisers who can bring clarity to your clients.